ABSTRACT
Comprehend, Cope and Connect (CCC) developed over time and therefore pre-dates the current movement to challenge conceptualization of mental health, organization of services and research along diagnostic lines. Without intervention, the attendant adverse social effects can become embedded trans-generationally, as the ways in which one generation copes with the impact of such events inevitably affects the next generation. A particular understanding of mental health problems lies at the heart of CCC. This sees so-called symptoms as understandable ways of coping with how the individual feels inside. Where the status of the self is recognized as basically fluid and central to wellbeing, extreme ways of managing this become comprehensible. This applies to ways of managing the experience of the self, such as dissociative shifting from one state to another, shutting down physically and psychologically in the face of a perceived dangerously low place in the primate hierarchy or seeking total exit from an intolerable situation through suicide.
